33

Cities

488

Settlements

6753

SDI puts people at the center of the fight to end global urban poverty.

Meet our Global Poverty Fighters

Edith Mbanga,Namibia

This is Edith Mbanga, a Global Poverty Fighter from Windhoek, Namibia. Edith moved to Namibia as a young woman and rented a small room for her husband and 8 children. When her hairdressing clients saw her living conditions, they suggested she join other women to save money to get a house. Edith joined a savings group and, through learning from other women from the SDI network, she was able to save money to get a home for her family. Since then, Edith has been working hard to make sure that women and their families in Namibia and across Africa have a safe roof over their heads.

Featured Projects

For the organized urban poor problems are opportunities. The elders in the Jinja Federation, concerned that so many of their youth were unemployed, hit upon the idea of manufacturing building materials themselves. That is how the Jinja Materials Workshop was conceived. Before long the Jinja Federation constructed a building materials workshop where youth from Jinja’s slum are trained to manufacture affordable and eco-friendly building materials.
The site has now become a learning centre for the manufacturing of innovative, climate-friendly building materials. At the same time it gives local youth valuable skills training and small but regular income from the sale of their products.
But more than half the youth in Uganda’s second largest city are still unemployed and there are many public facilities and houses to be built. Joseph Serunjogi and the federation in Jinja need help to make that happen, and in other parts of Uganda, more Federation groups are requesting support to start similar income-generating projects of their own.

You can support Joseph and the Jinja Federation by contributing towards training more youth in the Jinja Materials Workshop, or you can help the Uganda federation extend this project to other cities where the demand for youth employment, public amenities, and houses is just as high.

To date, 44 households (230 people) have been connected to the Simplified Sewerage System. The Vinguguti sanitation project has made a world of difference in the lives of the 230 people in the community with improved sanitation, but there many more people who need to be connected.

You can help improve health, hygiene, and dignity for the members of Lucia’s community by supporting 1 household to connect, 10 households, or 50 households.

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Map
[om_gmap zoom="12" lat="-6.8364766" lng="39.2388495" infowindow="Vingunguti is an administrative ward in the Ilala district of the Dar es Salaam Region of Tanzania. According to the 2012 census, the ward has a total population of 106,946" styles="_retro"]

The community has gained skills and capacity in housing construction – a good thing, as over time, more people have moved to Chamazi and the need for housing has continued to increase.
The community in Chamazi has a lot more houses to build. They need your support to purchase materials and train community members in the necessary construction skills to build durable homes.

You can support Rose and her community by assisting with raw materials, with the training of a community contractor, or by supporting the construction of an entire home for a family.

The Arlington evictees joined about 3,000 other families who were also resettled at Stoneridge, a plot of land that was once a farm on the outskirts of Harare. About half the families were allocated plots without any basic services, while the others were told to wait.
As part of relief efforts, the federation is providing wooden cabins as temporary shelter while families negotiate and save for a longer-term solution. Because the land lacks basic services, a borehole is also needed in the newly occupied section of the land in order to provide water for the relocated households.

You can help Alice by contributing towards the cost of materials and construction of her transit home. You can also offer support to the community so that boreholes can be sunk, community construction teams can be trained and building materials can be purchased.